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Pennsylvania Refuses to Disclose Banned Website List
koehn writes "In an interesting turn of events, the Attorney General of Pennsylvania has ordered all PA ISPs to block sites that have child porn. If that's not bad enough, they won't tell you which sites those are because - so the excuse goes - that could be construed as 'disseminating pornography.' So much for public review, huh?" See the previous story.
Here
But what about this?
Oh BTW, Pajonet's Hot or Not News Site has been totally redone
So here's how the game is played: someone notifies the authorities about a child porn site. Several days (weeks) go by before the claim is looked into. Several more days pass by until the site is eventually shut down.
In the mean time, ISP's can act on their own accord by blocking access to known child porn sites. This is a good thing (TM).
Child porn is illegal everywhere I am aware of. Why block the websites when they can be taken down like they should be? That's like when your mother told you to clean your room and so you just shoved it all under the bed, didn't make your room clean and this wont make the internet better. A band-aid won't stop the bleeding.
If they fail to make the list open then some cracker will crack one of the covered ISP's and make the list public. Information wants to be free, and any information this widely distributed is bound to make it into the wild. Now I personally believe that hidden government is bad in general, but I put up with the CIA and NSA because they provide a service that is necessary and requires secrecy. Whether blocking sites alleged to contain kiddie porn is a compelling enough argument to put up with hidden government is debatable, but for me it is not.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
The public seems to have something of a love-hate relationship with child porn. On one hand, child porn in the classical sense is bad. On the other hand, child porn in the form of Britney and Christina is just fine? I remember reading an article on Britney before the music industry pimped her out. Cute kid. I just say LeAnn Rimes the other day on a Blender cover, topless. Even country music has gotten into it. Sigh... Maybe just another reason to hate the RIAA?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
The problem is, this viewpoint is flawed for two reasons.
1. Making something illegal, making it tough to get, making it risky to get, doesn't stop it. As long as there's demand, someone will be supplying, someone will be producing. Worse, because the supplying is done on the black market and thus prices can get steep, there isn't just 1 guy in his basement trying to be the supplier. The more money there is to be made, the more people you'll have trying to be the suppliers. Want an example? Try prohibition. Try the "war on drugs." Both failed miserably and one of them is still costing us billions of dollars a year. I'm not saying we should legalize child porn, I'm just saying that the continual "cracking down" is a futile effort because there will always be demand and thus there will always be supply.
2. From what I understand, child porn is not a purely profit driven enterprise. Not everyone who makes child porn does it to sell it. Some of them do it because, surprise surprise, they like diddling kids. These people are going to keep diddling kids whether they can profit off the pictures or not. In other words, even if by some blessing all child porn was eliminated from the world tomorrow, along with all cameras, camcorders, and any other device capable of making porn, the abuse would still be going on.
But your average law maker fails to think all of this through, instead opting for the lazy way out, "let's make more laws making it even more illegal than it already is!! That'll fix it!"
This is far from an original idea. The Pope and Roman Inquisition did the same thing back in the 1700's and 1800's. The Church published the "Index librorum prohibitorum" or "List of Prohibited Books".
Once the list got out, nearly every book on it became a best seller and eventually the list itself was put on the "Index librorum prohibitorum". So the Catholics arrived at the same point. The Catholics maintained a secret list of prohibited books but wouldn't disclose what was on the list for fear of promoting that which was prohibited.
Either this guy knows his history or it's a clear case of "There is nothing new under the Sun." I wonder if he also knows that in 1966 the Index was abolished. I suspect the list was abolished because the Catholics could no longer keep up with the volume of books being released and they had probably had their fill of p0rn too. So, if history does repeat itself, this list will fade away too. I just hope he doesn't start making claims that "heavy bodies fall faster than lighter bodies."
No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!
I live in Pennsylvania and I've been using an international proxy server for a while because I don't trust either my state or my federal government.
Often, but not always, I use proxy servers to mask my location and avoid the possible censorship; especially while looking for information regarding the Iraq invasion. Aljezerra for one has blocked the USA at times from fully accessing their site. I would not doubt if my ISP or government has been censoring or monitoring the activities of their customers/citizens.
Don't trust anyone.